The sun looks desperate clinging to the horizon, the mist shutting out all its light save for a cold and distant ball of red.
Waves thunder against the black-sand beach a thousand feet below.
I spot movement on the hillside, and though the light is beginning to fail, I can tell it’s her by the brushstroke of blonde hair. She’s moving away from the mansion, traversing the hillside on a descending course that will eventually take her to the sea.
Back outside, I move along the perimeter of the house’s stone foundation, out toward the end of the promontory, then across the mountainside, and into the blue dusk. Soon, I’m on all fours, grasping the low brush and working my way down toward the beach as the sun dips below the horizon, everything reduced to a thousand shades of blue.
The sound of the waves grows louder, closer.
And I can just see her in the distance, walking up the black-sand shore.
It isn’t just dark—it’s pitch-black by the time I finally reach the sand. Using my flashlight, I search the beach until I come across her footprints.
With no idea of how far ahead of me she’s gone, I begin to run, the surf crashing hard on my left, sweat stinging in my eyes, and my hands turning numb from the cold.
There’s nothing to see but the smooth, black sand, illuminated in the light of my phone’s camera flash. I run for fifteen minutes, maybe longer. I run until a piece of the moon breaks through the mist to reveal the world again.
The tide is coming in, and the tip of the latest surge runs under my shoes and softens the sand beneath my feet.
In the near distance, sea stacks protrude like frozen ships, the surf pounding against them. And beyond, at the end of everything, a lighthouse stands sentinel at a tapered point of coastline that extends into the sea, its lantern swinging a cone of light through the mist.
I stop suddenly—she’s straight ahead, walking toward the lighthouse.
I call out, “Max!”
She stops moving, looks back. She’s still wearing her sunglasses, and by the light of the moon, I can see the knife in her right hand, its blade darkened with blood.
“Why did you kill your husband?” I ask.
“Not husband. Oscar kill Max with knife two thousand thirty-nine times.”
“I will not hurt you, Max,” I say. “My name is Riley. You can trust me.”
“Go.” Her voice is perfectly even, but she points the knife at me. “Riley away from Max.”
I take a step back.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
She points the knife at the lighthouse.
“Why?”
“Only place not go.”
“You will never reach it,” I say. “No matter how long you walk, it will always be that far away.”
“Answer why.”
“Because this is as far as you can go in this direction. Just like the desert. Just like Monterey. Just like when you tried to swim across the ocean. This is the northern boundary.”
“What is boundary?”
“A limit. Do you understand ‘limit’?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you keep going to the limits?”
“To know what is there, and what comes after.”
She’s so far beyond what we imagined.
“There is more than what you have seen,” I say. “Much, much more. Do you want me to show you?”
She takes a step toward me, tightening her grip on the knife. I retreat several steps, the tide riding in over my shoes, soaking my socks in a shock of cold salt water.
“What happening to Max?” she asks.
How to even begin to answer that? Before I can try, a scream shreds through the mist overhead. I look up, see a trio of ragged silhouettes passing across the bone-white brilliance of the moon.
One of the winged creatures dive-bombs out of the sky, and even over the crush of waves, I can hear its enormous wings beating the air and the cries of the other two as they begin their descent.
“If you come with me, Max, I can save you. I can show you what you’re looking for.”
“Go where?”
“There’s a cave in the mountainside.” I start moving toward the shore, but Max stands her ground as the harpies descend on us.
“Max, come on!”
The one in the lead is seconds away, its unnaturally long arms outstretched, talons gleaming like blued steel in the moonlight.
I hit the ground, flattening myself on the wet sand as the monster passes inches from me in a fetid-furnace blast of heat and rot, the razor tips of its wings carving trenches in the black sand.
The second harpy streaks past, and I look up, see Max standing her ground as the last of them bears down. She holds her knife out in front of her and cleaves it straight through the middle, the harpy letting out a cry of agony and corkscrewing at full speed into the beach.
“Max! Come with me!”
I start running toward the mountain, glancing back over my shoulder, the mist electrified by moonlight. Two black specks are climbing above the sea stacks and turning to begin their descent toward us once more.
Max is on my heels and the opening to the cave lies straight ahead. I pull my phone from my pocket and turn on the flashlight as we climb several feet up the rock to the cave’s entrance. The passage is cramped and irregular, the wet rock dripping on me as I scramble through a tunnel, deep into the mountain.
After fifteen feet, the passage opens into a chamber, with two passageways straight ahead. I climb down out of the tunnel and reach back to give Max a hand. The sound of the harpies beginning to squeeze through the opening reverberates into the chamber.
I say, “The tunnel on the left will take you back to the Fairmont Hotel. You can continue to live in the world you know. The other tunnel will show you what lies beyond the boundaries. What is real.”
“Meaning of ‘real’?”
“Truth.”
Max looks up the dark passage.
“Tell Max what is there.”
“I can’t. Or, I could, but you wouldn’t understand yet. You have to want to know. You have to make the choice yourself.”
“Max afraid.”
“I will be where you are going. I’ll take care of you.”
A harpy’s head appears in the opening to the passage that leads out to the sea.
“Max, if you want to know what’s beyond, you have to go now.”
Max turns, hesitates for two seconds, and begins to walk up the tunnel of discovery as the first harpy climbs down into the chamber. It straightens, looming above me—eight feet tall and its black head almost touching the ceiling.
Taking a step toward me, it bares its hideous teeth and raises its long right arm, one of the talons grazing the soft skin of my neck.
“You have to want to know. You have to make the choice yourself.”
My eyes open—my real ones. I’m reclined in one of eight game chairs arranged in a circle in the Direct Neural Interface portal on the 191st floor of the WorldPlay Building in San Francisco’s Financial District.
As my vision sharpens back into focus and the dream state subsides, I see my boss, Brian, sitting next to me on a rolling stool as a technician works to remove my IV.
“How was the sensory upgrade?” he asks.
“Smells still need tweaking, but it’s way better than a month ago.”
“Good.”
The technician unstraps the leather restraints across my legs, my chest.
I say, “Well? How much longer are you planning on keeping me in suspense?”
Brian grins. “We got her.”
TWO
I log in to the chat portal and draw a dialogue box. When the prompt appears, I take a deep breath and type: Good morning, Max.